City of Ghosts (2017)

A documentary that follows the efforts of "Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently," a handful of anonymous activists who banded together after their homeland was taken over by ISIS in 2014. ... See full summary »

Director:

Matthew Heineman

Stars:

Hamoud Almousa, Hussam, Mohamad Almusari

Nominated for 1 Primetime Emmy. Another 15 wins & 31 nominations.

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Hamoud Almousa	...	Himself
Hussam	...	Himself
Mohamad Almusari	...	Himself
Hassan	...	Hamoud's brother
Naji Jerf	...	Himself (archive footage)
Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi	...	Himself (archive footage)
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Abdelaziz Alhamza	...	Himself

Storyline

A documentary that follows the efforts of "Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently," a handful of anonymous activists who banded together after their homeland was taken over by ISIS in 2014. With deeply personal access, this is the story of a brave group of citizen journalists as they face the realities of life undercover, on the run, and in exile, risking their lives to stand up against one of the greatest evils in the world today.

---

Plot Keywords:

syria | isis | raqqa syria | islamic terrorism | islamic state | 

---

Taglines:

Our words are stronger than their weapons

---

Genres:

Documentary | War

---

Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for disturbing violent content, and for some language

Details

Official Sites:

Official site [Japan] Official Website

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

21 July 2017 (UK)

Also Known As:

Spökstaden

Filming Locations:

Turkey

Box Office

Gross USA:

$128,015, 7 September 2017

Company Credits

Production Co:

Our Time Projects

Technical Specs

Runtime:

92 min

Color:

Color

Did You Know?

Trivia

Amazon paid $2 million for the rights to the film.

---

Connections

Featured in Docventures: Valta ja ISIS (2018)

---

Soundtracks

Broken Wing
Written by Jackson Greenberg, Wasfi Massarani & H. Scott Salinas
Performed by Wasfi Massarani

User Reviews

You want real reality? Watch these citizen journalists sacrifice all.

Having won a national award for journalism, I was feeling really pumped about me until I saw the journalists in City of Ghosts. Here are heroes who leave me breathless in awe of their courage fighting Isis in its home, Raqqa. A formerly docile town, it changed with the emergence of ISIS tanks in 2014 after the remarkable Arab Spring of 2012.

The citizen journalists, RBSS (Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently), begin fighting in earnest when they realize ISIS has taken control because of the vacuum of power after that Spring. This doc is almost exclusively a chronicle of their struggle to remain viable after ISIS zeroed in on them and began torturing and beheading relatives and friends.

So the heroism is much more personal than fighting ISIS; it is about good people combating an implacable foe at the expense of their families and themselves. When the doc shows a fighter watching a video of his father being assassinated and when at the end of the film a fighter shakes in guilt and fear over having survived and his friends didn't because he escaped from Raqqa, the audience is witnessing a reality show like no other our poor commercial fluff gives us in that name.

The depressing element of this is how successful ISIS has been because of the Hollywood production type elements in these gruesome and seductive promos. Assassinations are edited with the expertise of your garden-variety super-hero blockbuster.

City of Ghosts features fighters who are ghosts of their former happy lives, but they are heroes the likes of which we have long forgotten.